Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin have proposed using existing seawater desalination technology to treat oilfield wastewater for cooling data centers, thereby reducing reliance on freshwater. This research was published in the journal *Water Research*. The researchers point out that there are several desalination methods: reverse osmosis, which forces water through a semi-permeable membrane, is highly energy efficient but struggles with water saltier than seawater; heating water into steam and then condensing it into freshwater is also feasible, but more energy-intensive. A data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of water per day, while some Texas oil fields generate thousands of times more wastewater. Vaibhav Bahadur, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas's Cockerell School of Engineering and one of the study's leaders, stated, "We're not waiting for some future technology to solve our problem." He believes that while wastewater treatment has costs, even using the most energy-intensive methods, these costs represent only a small fraction of the total energy consumption of a data center. He turned his attention to the Permian Basin in West Texas, where oil and gas extraction produces about 8 billion gallons of produced water daily—equivalent to 1,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools. This water currently has to be transported long distances before being injected underground, posing risks such as inducing earthquakes, and there will be nowhere left to bury it as early as 2030. He said that purifying this water for use in data centers is a good solution. Researchers also emphasized that less than 4% of the Earth's water is freshwater, and only about 0.5% is safe for human use; by 2028, data centers are projected to use approximately 33 billion gallons of water.
